Last month at Dreamforce ‘12, Salesforce announced new services, including Salesforce Identity, a service that includes single sign-on (SSO) and user management capabilities. Salesforce Identity will leverage identity standards such as the Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML) for federation and System for Cross-Domain Identity Management (SCIM) for provisioning, which emphasizes the vital role of industry standards long-championed by Ping Identity.

When a major enterprise cloud computing company like Salesforce sets its sights on identity and SSO, it is a clear signal of how essential identity security is to today's socially-connected enterprise. At Ping, we welcome Salesforce to the identity community and applaud their commitment to industry standards.

Salesforce SSO enabling its platform presents tremendous opportunity for both application developers building on the platform and for enterprises seeking to tap into those apps that run critical business functions. If you are a company that manages your identity infrastructure in the Cloud and rely heavily on the Salesforce platform, a centralized place from which to manage identities is welcomed news.

[disclaimer: brief product plug]There are also many enterprises that rely on on-premises directories such as Microsoft Active Directory for their core identity store. With this in mind, we have launched Ping IdentityBridge for Salesforce to provide seamless user management and secure SSO services for Salesforce applications from Active Directory. It is immediately available for test drive and deployment on the AppExchange, and will also provide "Day One" support for Salesforce Identity when it becomes available next year. Also, SaaS providers that are looking to get SAML enabled can use the PingOne platform to quickly enable their app and can even sign up for a Free Application Provider Services account.

What does Salesforce Identity mean for you?As a software executive, you may build your applications on the Salesforce platform. If so, this will increasingly ease the process for customers accessing and managing use of your application in their business. Strengthening the security posture while improving the convenience is a tremendous plus, and standards like SAML and SCIM are keys to success here.

If your company offers a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) product, Salesforce Identity underscores the fact that to achieve enterprise adoption at scale you need identity standards such as SCIM and SAML combined with SSO capabilities. That combination is the lynchpin for getting enterprise IT and business users on-board. Salesforce acknowledges this, and others should follow its lead. Reliance on standards make it easier for IT to say ‘yes' and SSO makes it easier for users to actually use the product.

Removing friction from IT (those that manage apps) and business users (those who use apps) will drive greater utilization, commitment to your product - and generate long-term value for all parties.

This blog will share insights, best practices and anecdotes of how secure cloud identities can shorten time to revenue for software companies, speed user adoption and increase application stickiness for increased long-term customer value. This blog will include primers on technology and standards while providing commentary on current events relevant to identity in the software business.